COLEG Morgannwg music tutor Chris Summerhill needs your help to get into the charts!

Chris is releasing his first single via his own recording company, Summertime Records and needs 2,500 copies of Under the Sun sold to get into the Top 40.

After finding his feet in music recording whilst studying for a Marine Biology degree, Chris quickly sought out a musical alternative and now has the recording experience of musicians three times his age.

Chris, who lives in Aberdare, but tutors at the Rhondda campus of Coleg Morgannwg, had his first guitar when he was 16 and now has just co-produced and engineered Racing Cars’ recent album Second Wind.

After his first musical purchase Chris didn’t hold back and started to amass a formidable collection of instruments, not just the basic ones, bass guitars, piano and drums, but Hawaiian lap steels a 60's auto harp, a 57-year-old mandolin and a Victorian pump organ to name a few.

He said: “That was always the secret to my sound, I would just buy any instrument I could afford, I would layer all these instruments on a track, other people were out there sampling everything, I was trying to take it back you know, like the old days, it forced me to really work on the arrangements of the songs, which I always felt was the key, especially in recording.”

Following on from his success on the live circuit with acoustic duo Summers and Jones and a brief stint as Bloody Holly in the Elvis Preselli Dead All Star tribute band (Really, Don't Ask), Chris Summerill has decided to front his own band and strike out on his own, with a launch performance for his new single at Cwmbach Legion on May 17.

The single will be available to download from iTunes on May 19.

For more information or to listen to Under the Sun go to myspace.com/chrissummerill or www.chrissummerill.com